


replace this worried heart with a solid stone chipped from your own

by bigfootsflannel



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Soulmates, canon character deaths referenced, soft, soulmates can feel what the other feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28840437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigfootsflannel/pseuds/bigfootsflannel
Summary: When Felix was young, he didn't really understand that what he had with Sylvain was something as truly, genuinely special as it was.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 14
Kudos: 86





	replace this worried heart with a solid stone chipped from your own

**Author's Note:**

> title is from 'husky' by the band concord

When Felix was young, he didn't really understand that what he had with Sylvain was something as truly, genuinely special as it was. It took years for him to understand that it wasn't just their close friendship that made him feel the way he did, and that there was a reason that he didn't have the same level of understanding with Ingrid or Dimitri.

All he really knew was that Sylvain would always find him when he was in distress. Sylvain would look like he'd been struck, like his hurt was just as bad as Felix's, and the comfort that he gave seemed to soothe him in return.

Sometimes he would feel things that he couldn't explain. He would get scared for no reason, or he'd feel an injury that definitely wasn't really there. He assumed that this was just part of what it meant to grow up - after all, his father often looked tired, troubled by things far beyond Felix's comprehension.

It took maybe too long for things to click into place. When they finally did, it was because there was no ignoring it any further.

His body temperature dropped seemingly out of nowhere, shivering and cold in spite of sitting in front of the fire, and his mother fussed over him, worried his body was shutting down. He was scared, terrified, for reasons he couldn't explain.

At the same time, Sylvain was missing.

And then Sylvain was found at the bottom of a well, halfway frozen, and Glenn Fraldarius was the first to figure out the tie between Felix and Sylvain. Once the healers got a hold of Sylvain and he was pronounced out of the woods, all Glenn could do was laugh about it (further upsetting an already rattled Felix, and earning him a stern talking to, during which Glenn connected the dots for Rodrigue as well).

Felix didn't figure it out himself, even as he clung to Sylvain and felt their combined relief and happiness and warmth rolling between them.

After all, he had only a vague concept of what it meant to have a soulmate. His mother had told him stories when he was even younger, but it had all been just fairytales. He knew it was a rare and special thing to actually find your soulmate; she'd been kind, but she had set him up with the expectation that he might never get to meet them. Distance was a factor, it seemed - most people lived far enough from their soulmate that they would only feel them in fleeting moments, usually dismissed as just an errant mood or ache from having slept wrong.

Now, though, Rodrigue had sat him down and tried to have the conversation himself. “You and Sylvain have a special bond,” he tried to tell him, and that did nothing to clear things up.

“He's my best friend,” Felix told him, nodding, because  _ obviously _ they had a special bond.

Rodrigue had struggled his way forward from there, trying to point out that, well, wasn't Dimitri also his best friend and what he felt around him wasn't the same, was it?

Eventually Glenn had spared him and taken it upon himself to sit down with Felix and explain the situation himself. Felix had curled up against his older brother's side, staring up at him wide-eyed.

“Sylvain is a part of you. And you're part of him. Your souls are braided together… you share parts of each other's souls, basically,” he explained, and Felix's hand wandered to his chest as if seeking out a hole where Sylvain might have managed to sneak a piece of his soul out. Chuckling, he guided Felix's hand to rest over his heart. “It's there, more or less.” The rumor was that soulmates' hearts always beat in sync, though Glenn wasn't sure how true that was; but it was good enough to demonstrate the point to Felix.

“How did it get there?” he asked.

“If what they say is true, the Goddess put it there,” he said. “She looked at you and Sylvain and decided that you belonged in each other's lives.”

“Of course we do,” Felix responded, because again, that much was terribly obvious to him. It was a little bit strange to think that the Goddess herself had been keeping an eye on what he'd been doing and decided that Sylvain was just that important to him. “So… She gave me a piece of his soul?”

“That's about the size of it, yeah,” Glenn said with a nod. “That's why you can feel the things that he feels.”

It did make a kind of sense. There had been so many moments where he couldn't explain his feelings or the way they came on so strongly and so suddenly, but everyone had always just kind of come to assume that that was just the way Felix was.

Bringing his knees to his chest with a huff, he said, “I thought you told me that was just me being a crybaby.”

“Yeah, well, you  _ are _ a crybaby,” Glenn said, reaching out to ruffle the hair on top of his head. “But you also have a soulmate whose feelings you're picking up on. And they probably affect you just as much as your own.”

“Is it always going to be like this?”

“Probably, yeah,” Glenn told him with a small nod. “And that's a good thing, right?”

The younger brother thought about it for a moment before nodding, looking up at him with a smile. “My soul is always going to be safe if he's got a part of it?”

“Of course,” Glenn said, because that was easier than pointing out that Sylvain was just as much trouble as Felix was. Far more trouble, actually.

“Good,” he said. “I'll keep his safe, too.” His heart was over his chest again, the words spoken with all the sincerity he could muster.

It was all still over Felix's head, really, and Glenn could tell it by looking at him. He wondered if there was some kind of record for how young soulmate pairs had ever found each other. But Felix was alright with it, calmer now that Sylvain was safe and also calm, and now they knew and they could keep each other on an even keel.

“Why don't you go and check up on Sylvain again, huh?” he said, giving Felix's shoulder a squeeze before getting to his feet.

Eager to see his friend again, Felix scurried to stand up as well, then after a quick goodbye, headed down the hall.

On his way back, he passed his father's office, his father's voice coming from inside. That on its own wasn't unusual, of course, but there was something strange about hearing him like this; he was upset.

“ - hardly my place, and I fear it might do more harm than good.”

Alongside his voice, there was Sylvain's father's.

“He is your son, of course it is your place,” the Margrave was saying. “They can remain close friends, and I think this development will mean nothing but good for the relationship between Gautier and Fraldarius, perhaps even Faerghus as a whole. But surely you recognize that we will have to keep an eye on this to ensure they don't get carried away.”

“They are soulmates. I wouldn't call it getting carried away if eventually - ”

“Now think this over,” Sylvain's father cut him off before he could finish his sentence. Felix shuffled closer to the door to hear them better, recognizing that they were speaking about him and Sylvain. “Any union between them will be a waste of their bloodlines. I can hardly let the Gautier line end just to let them live out some kind of fairy tale. The real world doesn't work like that, you know that as well as I do.”

“The Gautier line doesn't have to end,” he said, and there was some sputtering as Sylvain's father tried to speak, but Felix's father didn't let him. “You have two sons, don't forget.”

Felix decided that at that point it would be best to move on, because then Sylvain’s father was raising his voice and there was something frightening about the Margrave even on a good day. Sylvain obviously made for much better company.

The redhead was asleep again when he found him, which Felix had been told was to be expected after what he had been through, though it didn’t really make him worry any less. Still, he took it upon himself to get into the bed with him, curling up against his side as he had done plenty of times before. He placed his hand over Sylvain’s chest, feeling his heart beating underneath his hands and marveling at the thought that somewhere, tucked behind his ribs maybe, a piece of his soul existed within Sylvain.

* * *

As he grew a bit older, Felix gained a bit greater control over his emotions, which was probably a good thing for both him and Sylvain. Of course, he could never hide anything from him, so there was no getting around the smirk that formed on Sylvain’s lips when he felt the way that Felix’s heart always seemed to speed up when he caught sight of him on their visits.

He also grew more aware of the issues that came with their being soulmates, and the fact that allowing them to form any kind of romantic attachment would cause issues - while it was essentially no problem in Fraldarius, being that they had Glenn, it was a much larger issue being that Sylvain was the only one of the two sons of Gautier that had a crest. That was the root of the argument that he had overheard when their connection had first been realized; that was the argument that Felix kept expecting to hear about from Rodrigue, but never did.

The same could not be said for Sylvain and his father, however; although no one had ever said anything directly about it, it was clear that Sylvain acted in a more measured way after the discovery of their bond.

As they grew into teenagers, though, Felix came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be much of an issue at all, regardless of how they interacted. Sylvain was so very, obviously interested in women. Which was fine, entirely fine, even though Felix had come to the realization that he may very well have handed his heart over to Sylvain long before he had known what it meant to love someone. It would be easiest for both of them, really.

He felt his best when Sylvain was around, though, there was no denying that. He threw himself into his training, and it felt good to have a different sparring partner than Glenn, who he had never been able to notch a win against. Sylvain either went easy on him or needed to take honing his skills more seriously - perhaps both - but regardless of how good it felt to beat him, there was something exhilarating about it. He could feel Sylvain's heart as though it were beating in his own chest, could feel the way the physical activity amped him up and fed off of it himself, working each other up in what could have been a perpetual loop.

Being around Sylvain felt good in general, really. He never had to wonder what was behind his stray feelings, and their emotions seemed to tie themselves together in a perfect plait.

Everything was fine, until it wasn't.

When Glenn died, it felt as though a part of Felix's heart had been forcefully ripped from his chest. He felt every bit the crybaby his brother had once poked fun at him for being, deriving absolutely no comfort from Rodrigue's attempts to console him. The Duke had never been particularly good at knowing how to handle Felix, and now every word that he said seemed to drive a wedge further between them. He didn't care about how chivalrous Glenn was. He didn't need a brother who acted as a true knight - he needed a brother who was alive.

The evening after word arrived of the events in Duscur, there was a sudden uproar downstairs. Felix didn't have it in him to even pretend to care about who or what had caused it.

Until: “Felix, you need to come downstairs.”

It rubbed at his already raw heart to hear his father's voice again at his door, and he needed him to leave. “We aren't talking about this again, I've already heard all I needed to hear.”

A heavy sigh, loud enough to be heard through the door. “Sylvain is here.”

“Sylvain?” he echoed, the word feeling almost incomprehensible. They weren't expecting a visit - he would have known. He started to rise out of his bed regardless, some part of him feeling the need to see Sylvain if he could, even if there was a chance that this was just some kind of trick on his father's part just to get him to talk.

But then there was a second set of footsteps outside the door, muffled voices that Felix couldn't quite make out through the door, and the door creaking open. He whipped around, prepared to shout his father out of the room, but instead -

There was Sylvain. Sylvain, standing there not quite dressed for having just rode in from Gautier, fully without permission or the knowledge of his father, as Felix would later find out.

“What are you doing here?”

“I felt you. I - I didn't know what was happening, but I couldn't just sit there knowing you were hurting,” Sylvain said, unbearable warmth and worry in his eyes.

Felix had been keeping it together decently well, all things considered, but with the weight of Sylvain's gaze on him and the knowledge that he would always catch him, he could practically feel himself crumbling. “Glenn,” he started, but his throat felt as though it was closing in on itself and he couldn't get anything else out.

“I know, you don't have to say it,” he told him. “We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to.”

He moved forward, wrapping his arms around Sylvain and burying his face as he finally let the tears fall free that had been threatening all day. He felt warm, familiar arms wrapping around him in return, and finally it felt like maybe the world wasn't ending.

He could feel their shared feelings, a whirlwind of the storm inside his mind and the affection that Sylvain seemed to actively be trying to flood him with.

Sylvain walked them over to his bed, where he gladly remained tucked up close to them, clinging as if afraid of what might happen if Sylvain slipped from his grasp. True to his word, he didn't press him to talk, and at some point Felix was able to calm down enough to fall asleep, his face still buried against Sylvain.

As the days passed and time moved forward as it always did, those tears turned into anger, a hard shell forming around himself that Sylvain was the only one who seemed interested in actually getting through.

(The secret was that he had never had to get through, really, because he was always there under Felix's skin, a part of him.)

* * *

Given the circumstances after the tragedy of Duscur, no one could really care too deeply about where exactly one noble teenager was. The entire aristocracy of Faerghus had been turned on his head, and while Rodrigue went to the capital to help pick up the pieces, and as the dust settled, Sylvain remained in Fraldarius.

A letter was sent back to his father explaining his whereabouts, in which he also spun some excuse about supporting House Fraldarius, and all told, Sylvain expected to have Ansel Gautier banging down the door demanding he return home at any time. After all, in spite of his words, it was plain to anyone paying attention that they truly were nothing but excuses - he was here for Felix. Just Felix.

But no such demands arrived, for which both Felix and Sylvain were grateful. As much as he wouldn't admit it, Felix was still in a delicate enough state that felt like the world would stop turning if Sylvain left him alone, and the other boy was all too willing to indulge him, to stay and make sure he ate and to provide and ear whenever he actually did feel like talking. At times he legitimately felt like he had no idea what he would have done without Sylvain there to help prop him back up - Ingrid could hardly look at him, Dimitri was lost somewhere in his own grief, but Sylvain remained a rock.

Days turned into weeks turned into months, and Sylvain spent more time on Fraldarius land than he did at home. This was what was best for everyone, really. Felix didn't need him there, not really, but they were both happier this way. Felix had a way to fill his days now that a huge void in the shape of Glenn had been left in his life (Sylvain wasn't an exact fit for that hole, but he was perfect in his own ways), Sylvain was out of Miklan's way, and to be fair, he genuinely was learning a lot and growing stronger each day, so there really wasn't much for the Margrave to fuss about. Perhaps most importantly, they were happy spending their days together. Felix could feel it in his veins, a lightness that carried them both through their days.

When a message arrived from Gautier, Felix was a little bit embarrassed to admit that his heart seemed to fall immediately with the thought that all of this was coming to an end: Miklan had officially been disinherited. Sylvain was, officially, the next head of House Gautier, and with that surely came the pressure that always came with how the Margrave looked at Sylvain.

“Well, guess it was a matter of time,” Sylvain said, as casually as if they were discussing the weather. Of course, it had never been any secret that Sylvain, having a crest, was always going to have the title eventually. But now it was suddenly a much more real thing, and Felix could feel a sort of anxiety clawing at the inside of his chest that he wasn't sure was his.

Buf then Sylvain swerved, as he so often did, and neatly folded the letter back up to put it aside. “I'm not going home unless I have to,” he said. Giving Felix a smile that somehow was sincere, though there was also the enormous weight of their fates - and the fact that, though no fault of his own, Sylvain had sealed Miklan's fate - lingering just below the surface, he asked, “C'mon, what do you say we head back to the stables? I really think we were making a breakthrough.”

He scoffed, though he also wasn't about to tell Sylvain no, no matter how much he really didn't think he was ever going to be half as at home on a horse's back as all of his friends seemed to be. “I'm better on foot,” he protested even as he started down the hall. “I'm quicker to react that way.”

“Okay, sure, but you can cover more ground if you ride a horse, even if you end up getting off the horse.”

“Won't it run?” he asked, and as they went together down to the stables, he could feel himself calming back down. There was just something about seeing the way Sylvain was so in his element as he flirted with the horses - with more genuine affection than had ever been afforded to any of the human women who received Sylvain's attention - that put Felix a little more at ease. 

Hours later, when they were sitting in Felix's room (while Rodrigue would be sure to come along and shoo Sylvain to his own room, having been careful to ensure that they didn't spend their nights together, they still had a degree of freedom afforded to them by the enormity of everything that had happened around them as of late), Sylvain flopped himself back against his sheets. “I don't even know why I'm still thinking about it,” he said.

“Of course you're thinking about it,” he said.

“I guess I just wish I wasn't. It would be easier to not. Every bit of this was inevitable from the moment I was born, but now that it's here…”

Felix looked down at him, and it occurred to him that Sylvain looked over than he ever had before. He wished that he knew how to fix this for him, but he was still young and the world felt just a bit too chaotic for him to begin to know how to control it, even just their small corner of it. “I know,” he said, because he did.

Sylvain looked back at Felix, sighing as he lifted a hand to rub over his face slowly. “I shouldn't even be complaining, at least I -”

“Don't you dare,” he said. “You know better than to pity me. I don't feel bad for myself, and you shouldn't feel bad either.”

They had never talked directly about the fact that Glenn's death had meant a great deal of future responsibility suddenly being foisted upon Felix, and possibly some of the reason for that was because, well, he hadn't let it sink in yet. He was supposed to be the spare, and he was still so young he felt an entire eternity away from becoming Duke.

“I don't know. I feel kind of like shit for both of us. Sorry, Felix.”

“Don't be,” he said, shaking his head, though he knew that the words were pointless. There was no getting around how Sylvain felt, and how it made him feel it as well. “We'll just have to make the best of what we have.”

A smile crept back across Sylvain's lips. “Look at you, suddenly the optimist.”

“Yeah, well… One of us has to be,” he said.

“I appreciate it,” he said, and his hand sought out Felix's.

He tried not to think about the way it made him feel, because with each passing day, the reasons that he could never have what he wanted - what the Goddess wanted for him, theoretically - seemed to pile up around him.

* * *

Ultimately, Sylvain did at least have to return home again for as long as it took him to sort out various pieces of family business. It was decided, ultimately, that if Sylvain wanted to continue his training at the Fraldarius estate, that would be all well and good as long as Rodrigue agreed, but both Sylvain and the Duke would have to send regular updates. This would be a small price to pay, Sylvain said in his letter.

That letter was folded up and tucked in a pocket close against Felix’s chest; no matter how ridiculous he knew it was, he still thrived on little mementos of him. That letter remained with him as he accompanied Dimitri to quell a rebellion in the west, and came back feeling like a man forever changed.

He could feel Sylvain’s feelings, could feel his worry and confusion no doubt in response to his own, but he couldn’t even think about that. His mind was in a loop, stuck on the sight of how much Dimitri seemed to relish taking those lives. Covered in blood that was not his own, the Prince was no longer the friend he had once known, but some kind of beast. It turned his stomach just to remember.

Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last either, Sylvain surprised Felix by already being there when he returned home, in spite of not having expected him back until the end of winter. Even more surprising was the way that Sylvain seemed to turn into a mother hen over him, checking him over for any injuries; unfortunately, what was wrong wasn’t a simple matter that could physically heal over.

“I told you, I’m fine,” he told him, and it was everything he could do to not snap at him - this wasn’t Sylvain’s fault. Sylvain had done nothing wrong.

“It felt - ” he paused for a moment, his eyebrows knitting together as he seemed to search for the right words. “It felt like you had been lanced through the heart. I thought… But then I could still feel you, but I didn’t know what…”

He trailed off again and didn’t seem to intend to pick back up, but Felix didn’t need to be told explicitly what it was that had gone through his mind.

By now, he had heard plenty of talk about what it felt like when one half of a soulmate pair died. Some said that the other would die at the same time, the two souls too intertwined to be able to live apart. If that didn’t happen, then one person could live on, but only a half-life, haunted by the part of themselves that was no longer there.

For a second, he felt guilty for having made Sylvain fear for the worst, but all of this had been taxing enough on his emotions and he couldn’t bear much more of it, and the fact of the matter was that they wouldn’t get very far in life if they went into a panic every time either of them went into battle.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” he said, waving a hand to dispel the notion. “So, you’ve seen that I’m alright? It’s been a long trip. I’m going to go lay down.”

He was getting fairly good at throwing armor onto himself to protect his heart. He’d never thought he’d use it against Sylvain, and the look on Sylvain’s face - genuine hurt, panging in his own chest just the same as if he’d felt it himself - made the act taste all the more bitter. But he absolutely didn't want to talk about what had actually happened to cause that pain.

He locked himself away all evening and hardly slept that night, kept awake by terrible dreams, the smell of blood thick in his nose, and when he got up in the morning, he almost expected to find out that Sylvain had left after his quick dismissal the night before.

Instead, Sylvain had stayed.

* * *

When they got to the Officer's Academy, it was almost astounding how people would hang around them and ask about what it was like to know your soulmate and to get to have them as an active part of your life. Worse was the fact that Sylvain somehow managed to use these conversations to flirt with girls.

Again, though, Felix knew that this was for the best. Being soulmates did not mean that they had to fall in love. He was able to pass off the feelings of jealousy that he knew he couldn't hide from Sylvain as simply irritation over having to witness his depravity. He could pass off a lot of things as mere irritation, really.

The new setting, on its own, did not mean much to Felix. It was simply a different place to grow stronger, although conveniently it did also provide a different pool of people to train with. Their new professor, mysterious though she was, was skilled enough with her blade to remind him just how much he had to learn.

Aside from that, being at the monastery meant that it was nearly impossible to avoid the boar. He almost considered requesting to be transferred to another class, but that would have presented issues of its own. He certainly didn't want to be taught by a drunkard obsessed with her own singleness, and a washed up crest scholar wasn't exactly much better. Besides that, he suspected that wherever he went, Sylvain would follow.

(And then he would bitch about no longer being in class with the hot professor.)

His relationship with Sylvain was a complicated one. He cared for him, oh so deeply, that much was for certain. He felt things in his heart that he couldn't put words to, and they were soulmates, and surely Sylvain could feel the way it tugged on his heart just to look at him sometimes, so it all should have been easy. But things were never easy, certainly not for either of them, and so he had to live with it. He could watch Sylvain toss himself at random girls, he could live with that and act like it didn't bother him.

The only wrinkle in that was that, well, he knew that almost nothing ever actually happened with those girls. Everyone assumed it did, and Sylvain acted as though it did and never tried to dissuade anyone from thinking whatever they wanted of him, but… There was no such thing as privacy in a soulmate bond. Felix felt everything that Sylvain felt, the good and the bad. He could feel the low simmering hatred underneath Sylvain's smooth surface, could feel the rush when they'd kiss him, but never anything beyond that. Only in the middle of the night, when he knew Sylvain was alone - he'd have heard the footsteps going past his door otherwise, having learned to always be at least a little bit on his guard.

And Felix had no idea what to make of that.

A couple of months into their stay at Garreg Mach, Felix already felt a little bit like he was losing his mind at it all.

“Oh! Felix,” a melodious voice caught his attention in the dining hall, and he turned to find Ashe approaching him, a small smile on his face. “I hope you don't mind if I join you?”

Truth be told, he did mind. He preferred his solitude, and for the most part people seemed to respect that, but something about some of his classmates meant that they had absolutely no issues with hopping right over that boundary. He supposed this time it was his own fault for actually taking a seat in a public space for his dinner. Somehow, he found that he couldn't quite say no to Ashe. There was just something about his face, and the way it would surely turn into that of a kicked puppy if he told him to leave him alone. It was the same way with Annette - clearly, he was turning soft.

“Go ahead,” he said, gesturing for Ashe to take a seat.

Humming, the boy sat down, offering him a grateful smile before starting to eat. For a few minutes, they ate together in silence, and Felix thought that maybe this wouldn't be so bad. Of course, it didn't last, because then it became clear Ashe had simply been working up his nerve. “It's difficult, isn't it?” he asked. “You and Sylvain, I mean.”

“It's fine,” he said. He didn't need to have this conversation with him, he didn't need to have it with anyone - he barely had it with Sylvain.

But when he looked at Ashe, there was a look on his face that he couldn't quite discern. Etched in his features, there was… understanding, maybe. “I wonder if it gets easier,” he mused. “Everyone acts - and I can't say that I myself wasn't the exact same way - like finding them will make everything perfect. But it doesn't actually work that way, does it?”

Felix felt like maybe he was hallucinating. Maybe there was something wrong with his food. “You…?”

Laughing, Ashe gave him a small smile. “I can't pretend to understand your exact situation,” he said. “But imagine my surprise when I actually found my soulmate, only to find he had already sworn his life to someone else.”

There were a lot of things that Felix could say to that, but for once in his life he managed to hold his tongue. This was the closest he had come to feeling like someone understood him in all of this. “Ah,” he said instead, at a loss for what to say.

“You don't have to say anything,” Ashe assured him. “I just… Well, I suppose I wanted you to know that if you ever want to talk about it, I'm here.”

“I don't think there's anything to talk about. Sylvain is my friend, and my soulmate, and we know where we stand,” he said.

“And if that's the case, well, I'm happy for you that it's working out,” he said. He paused for a second, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, then added, “There's just something about watching the two of you, and how you look at each other. I thought maybe…”

That was where he had to draw the line. It was one thing to try to relate, and maybe Felix could have appreciated that, but whatever he was insinuating couldn't be. There wasn't anything in the way that Sylvain looked at him. “You've spent too long reading your stories,” he said as he started to get up from the table. “My situation is nothing like yours. It isn't some - some tragedy.”

When he glanced back at Ashe, he got a brief peek of that very same kicked dog look that he had been attempting to avoid. But he wasn't about to explain to him how no, he wasn't actually sure where they stood, and he didn't even know if he wanted to know.

* * *

A couple of times after that, Felix would catch Ashe looking at him out of the corner of his eye, and he tried not to let himself think about it. He absolutely did not need Ashe's pity. Soon enough, Lord Lonato raised a revolt, and Ashe was no longer in a state to try and provide a warm shoulder.

(In spite of himself and the fact that Felix had never been the type to try to provide comfort to anyone, he remembered the way he had felt after Glenn's death. If this was anything similar, and if Ashe was on his own, well… It was just barely an imposition to sit with him, silent in his support.)

He was settling into a strange friendship with him as time marched forward, against all odds. Ashe would put one of his books in his hands, and that evening he would find himself across the table from Sylvain as he studied, getting surprisingly engrossed in the exaggerated tales of knights and chivalry. There was something nostalgic about it, comforting in its own strange way.

It was a happy kind of rhythm that he'd settled into, different but the same as his life had been as of late. He was learning more than he'd ever thought he would, and there was something about watching Sylvain practice faith magic with Mercedes and Byleth that made his heart feel warm - and even warmer still when Sylvain felt it and looked at him with that smile that seemed to be reserved for him.

And then Byleth had pulled Sylvain aside to speak to him, and a few minutes later Felix's heart began to race. Deciding that Sylvain's business was also his business, at least as far as things that would cause a strong emotional reaction went, he got to his feet and stepped out to join them.

Sylvain turned to face him, looking utterly unsurprised to see him join them. “Miklan stole the Lance of Ruin,” he explained. “The church has decided it's our class's mission to retrieve it.” 

“What the fuck,” were the first words out of Felix's mouth. In other company he probably would have been reprimanded for his language, but Byleth didn't even blink.

“It's fine, Fe,” Sylvain said before she had a chance to say anything. “It's my family's business, so it should be my responsibility to clean up my brother's mess.”

“It's not your responsibility. No one is your responsibility but yourself,” he said, and he could feel himself growing angry, just thinking sbout this. “If your father wants it taken care of so badly, then maybe he should get out there and do it himself.”

“Be that as it may,” Byleth said, looking between the two of them for a moment and clearly not wanting to be in the middle of what could turn into an argument, “our mission is decided. I was giving Sylvain the option to sit it out if it was going to be a problem for him.”

“I'm pretty sure I'd be kicked from House Gautier if I tried,” Sylvain put in. “No, one way or another, this was always going to be my problem.”

Unfortunately, Felix knew that to be the case. While Sylvain had never taken duty to the extent that some of those around them had, he still felt a keen sense of responsibility for things relating to his family, particularly when it came to his brother. So he knew better by now than to try and fight him on it any further.

In the days that followed, as their mission crept up on them, they spent more time together in silence. Felix didn't know what to say, and he wasn't about to force Sylvain into trying to talk about it. Hell, he could already envision him saying that there was nothing to talk about. 

And so he watched, feeling a fire burning in his chest, as Sylvain faced Miklan. He could see it, could feel it - he didn't want to have to kill him. But then the relic that had started all of this seemed to overtake him, leaving a beast where a man had once stood, and his hand was forced.

Sylvain said nothing on the trip back to the monastery. 

Everyone seemed to walk on eggshells around Sylvain for a couple of days, but he quickly managed to have everyone convinced that he was fine, perfectly fine. It wasn't as though Miklan had been a good brother to him, after all. Nothing to mourn. It was exhausting for Felix, experiencing it secondhand.

But when they were alone, it was a different story. He allowed himself to let his mask down, it seemed, because there was no point in trying to hide what he was feeling from Felix. Most of the time, they still didn't talk about it. Felix both understood and could never understand in equal measure, but he let him in without question every time he arrived at his door. He’d simply wrap his arms around him, feeling woefully unprepared to comfort him as he felt deep, deep sorrow weighing down his chest.

Laid out on his back staring up at the ceiling a week after Miklan was taken down, he spoke into the quiet of the room, startling Felix. “I just can't stop thinking about how things could have been. Should have been.”

“If Miklan had been less of an asshole?” Felix knew it wasn't right to speak ill of the dead, no matter how poorly they had treated your best friend or how that best friend had held out hope for him to the very end, but he didn't have it in him to care - Miklan didn't deserve Sylvain.

Sylvain let out a sound that fell short of being a laugh. “If Miklan had had a chance,” he said. “If it hadn't mattered that he had a crest.”

Felix had heard it before, of course. Sylvain knew all too well the privilege afforded to him by the lucky circumstance of his being born bearing a crest, and had always hated that fact. He would have hated his crest if afforded the opportunity - he felt the way bile stung his throat when Sylvain picked up the Lance of Ruin and it had glowed under his touch. In another life, he could have been the one consumed by its power.

“There's nothing you could have done for him,” he said. He looked down at Sylvain, fighting the temptation to push his hair out of his face and instead occupying his hand by taking hold of Sylvain's.

The sudden touch seemed to jolt him but just for a moment, because a moment later he turned his hand over, lacing their fingers together. Felix wondered if it helped him feel a bit less unmoored; he knew that he'd always felt steadier when Sylvain had held him. “I know. And I know it's too late for him,” he said. “But I can still make a difference. I want to change the way that crests are the end-all and be-all of what makes someone worth their noblehood.”

It was a lovely thought, Felix couldn't deny that. And if anyone could make it happen, well, Sylvain was just the right combination of charismatic, stubborn, and clever to get there. “You will make a difference,” he said. “And I'll be there to help you however I can.”

Sylvain squeezed his hand, meeting his gaze with a small smile. “I'll be counting on it.”

* * *

When war came, it took away every bit of certainty that Felix had about the future. He had always been fighting, always going stronger, preparing for an eventuality like this, but… Now that it was here he felt oddly out of his depths. He had never looked forward to returning home and beginning the endless work of protecting Fraldarius and the best interests of its people, but a fighting a continent-consuming war wasn't exactly a preferable alternative. 

When Edelgard had declared war on the church, her reasoning had almost made him worry that Sylvain would defect; regardless of their feelings on her methods, a meritocracy aligned almost uncomfortably with Sylvain's own interests. But he had remained loyal to the crown, and that was, at least, one less thing to worry about - no matter what, he was not about to end up on the opposite side from him in this war.

There were plenty of other things to worry about, of course, and he questioned his own sanity in fighting for a country that was doomed - a country whose last hope was an insane prince who was destined for death row as soon as the Empire got a hold of him. The church was in shambles, the professor was gone.

But ultimately he was left with the reality of simply having to defend his home. He threw himself into the war, each day bringing a new challenge. Five years went by that felt like the blink of an eye.

He barely got to see Sylvain, both of them too caught up in defending their respective territories as they were the two houses putting up the biggest fight in Faerghus, but when he was lucky one of them would be able to call upon the other.

Fighting alongside Sylvain was, perhaps, the most natural thing that he had ever experienced. It was easier that way, with Sylvain close at hand so he could know if he was hurt without having to look - and be able to check that his injuries weren't serious, a privilege not afforded to him when they were apart - and to an extent they were able to communicate without words. He could know that there was something he had to look out for by the spikes in Sylvain's emotions, and the same applied in reverse.

Years into it, Felix was exhausted. So when Sylvain wrote to him reminding him of the promise their class had made before all of this about returning to the monastery for the Millennium Festival, he laughed at the absurdity of the thought, yet agreed to go nonetheless. Even if it was a pointless trip, at least it would be a change of pace.

Sylvain joined him in Fraldarius and from there they made the trip down to Garreg Mach.

“How long do you think this can go on?” Sylvain asked him, staring out at the horizon.

“No idea,” he said. The truth was, though, that with the way that things were going, it really couldn't be that much longer before the Empire could declare a decisive victory and put an end to it all. Neither of them wanted to admit it.

“I wonder where we'll be a year from now.”

Felix glanced over at him, taking in the look on his face. “Hopefully not dead.”

“We've gotten this far. I would honestly be pretty mad if this war got us after all,” he said.

“Nothing to be mad about if you're already dead.”

In spite of the dark reality of those words, Sylvain laughed. “I guess not, huh?” he said. A silence fell over them for a moment before he cleared his throat. “I was thinking, actually. I know it's getting to you just as much as it's getting to me.”

Though Felix felt at times like this war had taken a greater toll on him, he knew that this was true. Sylvain had always done a good job of appearing positive in everything that he did, but he knew that they had both been run ragged by it. He could feel it; their bond admittedly had helped to keep up their spirits, just knowing that the other was there, they could only prop each other up so much.

“So, what do you say we give ourselves something to look forward to?”

Raising an eyebrow, Felix found himself a little bit more excited than he ought to be. He was all too ready to agree to whatever Sylvain suggested. “What did you have in mind?”

“Maybe, if this goes on too much longer, then we just… go?” he said. “If things carry on like this, soon there will be nothing left of Faerghus. Who knows if we’ll even be able to show our faces anywhere, given our families’ positions against the Dukedom. It might be smarter to just take off. See the world, just you and me.”

Felix’s heart started to race, and he could no longer be sure whether it was because of him or Sylvain. There was a wild look in the redhead’s eyes, and though it felt like an impulsive suggestion, he also got the feeling that it was anything but. Sylvain had been thinking about this for a while. He meant every word of it.

It almost wasn’t difficult at all to imagine it. To throw away everything that his life had been built up to - it wasn’t what his father would have ever wanted for him, and he wondered if that meant that it was exactly what he ought to do

“Okay,” he said after a moment of nothing but the sound of frost crunching beneath their feet. “Let’s do it.”

“Yeah? Great. So… another year, maybe?”

“Unless things go to shit before then.”

“Fe, things have already gone to shit,” he pointed out. 

Before they could discuss it much further, they picked up the sounds of battle, and almost as an instinct, they took off to investigate.

What the found made Felix think that somehow, against all odds, maybe things were going to get better: the professor, back from the dead, and fighting by her side a man who, by all accounts, was certainly supposed to be dead by now. Rodrigue had never stopped believing that the prince could be alive, though all told, to look at him now he hardly looked like he'd been living much of a life.

Of course, all of those were thoughts that really only sank in later. Fighting alongside their old classmates came as naturally as it ever did, despite his insistence that he worked best on his own.

When it was all over and they all went back to the monastery, it was a surreal feeling. Everything was so close to the way it had been before, though of course the battle that had occurred the last time they were here and the intervening years and clearly taken their toll on the place. It wasn't all bad, though: Annette hugged him like she was attempting to squeeze the life out of him, and though there was a sadness in Ashe's eyes, he smiled at him and dragged him and Sylvain down to go eat with the rest of their class. In a strange way, it felt like returning home after a long time away.

But, as it always was, the joy that came with reuniting with his friends was short-lived. War was war, and there was no stopping it for light-hearted socializing.

Months passed, and it almost felt routine in a strange way. Seeing familiar faces on the other side never got easy, but at least having friends around meant that they could provide each other support. Seeing those around him succumb to their injuries turned Felix's stomach, but he'd long since learned to protect himself from that pain. There was nothing personal about war, and he knew better than to take it as such.

When his father was killed, he didn't talk about it. Sylvain arrived at his door, seemingly expecting him to be upset, but he felt - he wasn't sure what. Anger, for one. The old man had died, and for what? Would the boar even appreciate all that had been lost for his sake? If he didn't win this war, then it would have been a waste, start to finish.

He'd given himself time to mourn, briefly, in the privacy of Sylvain's embrace. He brushed off condolences from anyone else.

The war went on. The tides were turning, to be sure, but everyone was still tired. A long road was ahead, and no victory was ever guaranteed. But still, they fought.

It almost felt routine, until -

In the battle to take back Fhirdiad, Felix fell.

Maybe he had gotten arrogant, too comfortable in his reaction times. He had gotten this far and he'd survived, after all; it was easy to feel a little bit invincible. Axe-wielders were so much slower and clunkier than him, and yet - red. Blood. So much blood.

“Felix!” That was Sylvain's voice, panicked, but sounding so, so far away. He couldn't tell anymore if the fear he was feeling was Sylvain's or his own. Maybe it was both. He couldn't remember that last time he'd felt such terror.

“You're okay,” Sylvain said, and of all the blatant lies that he had ever heard the man say, this felt the most obvious. He could feel it between them - swirling, tumultuous guilt wrapping itself around the wound in Felix's core. “It'll be fine.”

He lifted his hands - so heavy, too heavy - trying to take hold of Sylvain's, if this was going to be his last chance to. “Syl - ” 

“Don't. Don't, it's okay,” Sylvain said, urging his hands back down. He was doing something with his own hands - what was he doing - then there was warmth. Healing magic, clumsy yet experienced. His hands were shaking, as though he hadn't been able to hop in to help any of their comrades' injuries mid-battle dozens of times before.

Felix tried to speak again, but just the same as his hands, his tongue felt like an immovable weight. His eyes could barely stay open, and he tried to focus on Sylvain. He wanted to tell him to make sure he was safe, to not do anything stupid, as he was so prone to do.

The last thing he saw before his eyes finally closed was Sylvain's face, brows furrowed as he tried to focus on what he was doing, his expression steeped in fear.

“Mercedes! Marianne! Someone!” he could hear him calling out, before finally everything went quiet.

* * *

Felix had never thought much about what it would be like to die. There was little point in worrying about it, after all - whatever was going to happen would happen, and there was nothing to be done to change that.

But he had always expected it would be more comfortable than this. He was on the hard ground, and his body still felt as though it was nothing but a solid weight.

Now that he had the time to think about it, it was almost funny. The Fraldarius line was so close to being wiped out, oh so quickly. All of that fussing over crests and bloodlines; maybe the easiest answer was just to kill off anyone who still had a crest.

As he was mentally taking stock of himself, trying to pull together the energy to open his eyes and sit up to greet whatever came next, he heard voices.

“... the right time.”

“But do you think there will ever be a right time? There's no guarantee that any of us will make it to tomorrow, you know that as well as I do.”

“I know. I know, I do. I just - I don't know, this feels like the absolute wrong time, with everything that's happening. I don't want him to think that I'm only saying it because - ”

“Forgive me for this, but for such an intelligent man, you're acting like an idiot. He's your soulmate, and I know you've both loved each other for years. I can see it, we all could. He's not going to think you have any motive but just to love him. Your soulmate is right there in front of you and you never know what could happen, both of you need to stop wasting time, for your own good.”

Sylvain and Ashe, his mind provided him a little bit belatedly. They were talking about… him? No. All of this was probably a dream, anyway. It was simply his dying brain making things up.

In spite of that, he opened his eyes and tried to push himself to sit up.

“Oh! Felix, you're awake,” Mercedes spoke up from next to him, and if he was looking for something to tell him that this wasn't a dream, her voice wasn't helping. She always sounded like she wasn't quite on earth, and yet - there was a comfort to it. “You can't strain yourself, lay back down.”

Though her voice was so strangely soothing, that feeling just as quickly went away when his heart started to race and not a second later, Sylvain burst into the room they were in, and - oh. He recognized those walls, but his mind was too sluggish to place his surroundings when all of his senses were instead focused much more on Sylvain.

“Sylvain, I told you to wait outside,” Mercedes said, her voice lightly chiding, but she didn't fight him any further on that. There was little stopping him from doing something that he wanted to do badly enough, especially when it came to Felix.

Sylvain barely glanced in her direction, caught up instead in staring at Felix. “You told me I saved his life, I think I get a free pass for that, right?” he asked, never breaking his eye contact with Felix.

“Saved my life?” he echoed.

Mercedes hummed. “Now, this is just a hypothesis on my part, but I believe it checks out. Soulmate bonds have depths to them that we can never hope to fully understand,” she said. “Just the same as when you feel his pain, one half of a pair can help sustain the other. So, between Sylvain's healing spells and the strength of your bond… you survived a wound that surely would have killed anyone else in your position.”

Sylvain had taken advantage of the opportunity presented by her being distracted speaking to Felix to crowd into his space. His hand was approaching his chest, and at another time he might have smacked his hand away, and maybe Sylvain would have laughed about getting told off for being too handsy.

But right now, Sylvain's hand came to rest over his heart, just resting it there, feeling the steady  _ ba-bump ba-bump ba-bump _ of it underneath his palm. Felix brought his own hand up to take hold of his, and the touch was enough to finally convince him that somehow, he actually was alive.

“It's safe to say that you're going to be fine,” Mercedes told him. “But that doesn't mean you should push yourself too quickly. You have time to rest up before we make our next move.”

“No, I don't. No one has time to rest,” he said, because that was more or less true. There was no such thing as off-time, and even those who were taking things easier were still only feeling  _ somewhat _ rested by the time the army was moving onto the next big battle.

Mercedes sighed, shaking her head. She ushered Sylvain to help Felix to sit up, placing a couple of pillows behind his back to prop him up. “Sylvain, I'm trusting you to make sure that Felix doesn't push himself,” she said. Then, her voice as pleasant and airy as ever, “It will be on your head if he reinjures himself and I can't save him.”

“I won't let him out of my sight,” Sylvain told her with a wink, and she giggled and gave his arm a light swat.

At that point, Ashe ducked his head into the room, his expression brightening when he saw that yes, Felix was indeed awake and responsive. He only stayed for a moment before announcing he needed to go let everyone else know.

It struck Felix then, just how much he was grateful to not be dead. He couldn't have left this behind. He tugged on Sylvain's hand, and the man looked confused for just a second before all too eagerly joining him on the bed, sitting on the edge of it and keeping his hand joined with Felix's.

What followed was a parade of Felix's friends coming by to check up on him and express their care for him and happiness that he'd pulled through. Annette burst into tears as she hugged him, then apologized profusely for jostling him. It all felt a bit dramatic for him, but maybe the fact was that this was the first time that they'd seen firsthand just how easily one of them could go down. Through these visits he learned that yes, they had taken back the capital, though that ultimately should have been obvious to him, now that he was more awake: they were in the palace.

His last visitor was Dimitri, who looked like he wasn’t sure if he even belonged there. It was almost humorous, in its own way, but ultimately Felix welcomed him in and spoke with him for a few minutes. Admittedly, he knew that repairing their relationship would be best for them both - and everyone around them - but that was certainly easier said than done. Small steps, he supposed.

Through it all, though, Sylvain stayed close by his side, unwilling to leave even as Mercedes insisted that everyone take turns so as not to overwhelm Felix (despite his insistence that it would take much more than this to overwhelm him).

When they were finally alone again, with even Mercedes leaving but promising to come back and check up on him later, Sylvain looked down at him, then at their hands, still joined after however long it had been. Felix had intended to pull away at some point, but it was just far more comfortable to stay.

“I'm sure you're pretty tired,” Sylvain commented.

“I'm fine,” he said, even though he could feel the way that simply staying awake was becoming more and more of an effort again. “I haven't gotten a chance to talk to you.”

Raising a brow at him, he let out a quiet laugh. “I've been here this entire time.”

“And? Everyone else was there.”

“Alright, fair point,” he said. “So is there something in particular you wanted to talk about?”

“No.”

“Ah. Alright, then,” he said. After a couple of seconds of silence, his face went unbearably fond again. “You gave me a scare, you know.”

He did know. He could see the look on Sylvain's face as clearly as if it were burned into the backs of his eyelids. “I didn't intend to.”

“Of course you didn't,” he said. “But I always kind of assumed that if one of us was going to have a close call like that, it would be me.”

“No, instead you were reckless in a completely different way, letting your guard down entirely in the middle of a battlefield.” After a brief pause, he added, “I'm glad you saved me.”

“Me too. It would have been pretty unfortunate to have to die there, too,” Sylvain said, because he was apparently incapable of letting things get too heavy (just heavy enough? It was tough to say).

The thought put a bitter taste in his mouth. “Regardless of what I've ever said before, you're not allowed to die if I do.”

“I might not have a choice. The soulmate thing and all,” he pointed out.

Felix blinked, thrown off-kilter for a moment. Of course he had heard Sylvain acknowledge that they were soulmates before, but it felt strange like this, in a conversation steeped in death and promises from a time when none of this had even been a factor. They had never really spoken about what it meant for them that they were soulmates, even as everyone around them acted at times like it was just inevitable that they end up together, especially when the world turned up on its head like this. “Then we'll have to accept several more decades of this.”

“Think you can live with that?” he asked, and his heart seemed to have accidentally ended up on his sleeve.

Maybe all of this had made him sentimental, or perhaps his exhaustion was making his tongue looser, because what he said next was, “I can't imagine a better life.”

Sylvain opened his mouth, but no sound came out besides something that could almost be mistaken for a laugh. He brought his hand to the side of Felix's face, and for just a second he was sure that he was going to kiss him - he was sure, even, that he could see his gaze fall to his lips. But instead, he just gently brushed his thumb over his cheekbone as he seemed to study his face, repeating the motion time after time, slowly, with purpose.

“You're going to make me fall asleep,” he told him.

“Yeah, well,” he said, a quiet laugh falling from his lips. Felix wanted to bottle the sound. “There are worse things.”

And so Felix did fall asleep, with Sylvain's hand still cupping his cheek, a fondness tucked in his chest like a cat sitting in front of a fireplace. When he woke up later, the whole moment had taken on a dreamlike quality that made him wonder if it had even happened.

* * *

Sylvain kissed him in the streets of Enbarr.

They had done it: they had taken the city and they were on Edelgard's doorstep, and while it certainly wasn't over, they were so much closer than either of them had thought they would ever make it. It was the first time, probably, that any of them genuinely felt properly confident that the end was in sight and they were going to win.

Playing it all back in his mind, he couldn't say whether it was a conscious choice or simply something that had been practically instinct. They'd all learned by now to hold tight to the things that mattered most to them, after all.

But Sylvain lifted him off the ground and spun him like it was nothing (and it wasn't nothing, especially not with the weight of Aegis strapped to him), laughing into it as he kissed him, overcome with it all.

When Sylvain put him down, they stared at each other for a moment, a thousand thoughts and questions left in between them, before Felix kissed him again. No more wasting time.

He was almost giddy with it, despite that never being a word he ever wanted to use to describe himself. But he had gone through too much, had wanted and hoped for so long that he had nearly forgotten what all that hoping was even for, but now he finally had it. And maybe that feeling was just as much Sylvain's as it was his - as in all things, they were together in this.

Of course, there was still a lot going on around them and so the bubble around them popped, far quicker than he would have liked for it to, but he could feel it in his chest that Sylvain was still thinking about it, about him.

That knowledge and half-baked hopes for the future carried him as they challenged Edelgard - whatever was left of her.

In the end, it almost felt anticlimactic. All of this had been building up to some kind of grand face-off, Dimitri finally feeling as though he had a chance to get his revenge. But when all was said and done, when the monster was taken down to size, she was still just a girl.

But he could hardly pay attention to that because Sylvain was suddenly in his space again. He took Felix by the hand, leading him out as Dimitri tried to reach out to the emperor one final time. It was doomed, and it was no longer their business.

And then - peace.

Which wasn't to say that things were suddenly so much better. Rebuilding was a different kind of exhausting, and if Felix was going to be honest, this was probably worse. He had never been much for politics, and as it turned out, the aftermath of war and unifying a continent was mostly politics.

Long days in meetings and having to pretend that he knew or even cared who some of the people he was speaking to were grated at him, far worse than the fighting ever did.

Worse than that was the fact that it left them without a chance to properly discuss what the hell it meant that they had started kissing each other. Even though it kept happening, in stolen moments in quiet corridors or just before they both collapsed for the night, Felix didn't know exactly where they stood, and he had rarely experienced anything so aggravating.

The only saving grace in it all was that Sylvain knew him well enough to try and shield him from it. Sylvain was genuinely in his element so much of the time, and it was almost a pleasure to watch him talk some noble into agreeing to what he wanted while still making them feel like they had won.

It was ridiculous, really. He had seen so much of Sylvain, good and bad and even brilliant, but somehow just watching him talk about something as stupid as merchant routes prompted the thought: _ I love him _ . He had known that he loved him, he did. But he had never actually put the words to it, apparently, because somehow actually acknowledging it for what it was made his heart hammer away at the inside of his chest and his stomach flipped. He felt like a ridiculous, heartsick teenager.

It was bad enough that Sylvain politely excused himself, turning to Felix with a bemused smirk on his face. “Everything good over there?” he asked, because he seemed to know exactly what was going on in Felix's mind without having to be told. Damn their connection.

“Perfectly fine,” he said, and he could feel his face heating up. It was with a little bit of amusement that he noticed he could see a corresponding blush on Sylvain's cheeks.

“Alright, if you say so. If I need to help you back to your room so you can lie down…”

“Shut up,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked down. Though, at least then he would have been out of the middle of all this and maybe he could convince Sylvain to stay long enough for them to have a real, significant conversation. And maybe some kissing.

As if reading his mind, Sylvain did cross the distance between them, resting a hand on his shoulder briefly as he said, “Let's take the evening to spend with each other, what do you think?”

“Yeah, okay,” he said, casual even though by now he was sure his cover was well and truly blown.

The next few hours dragged by, but finally they were able to call it quits. Sylvain made his excuses for both of them and brought food up to Felix’s room for them to sit together on the bed and talk.

“So, I was thinking,” Sylvain started.

“That’s rarely good.”

“Hey, rude,” he said, but he was smiling, unfazed. “I actually think you’ll like this thought.”

Felix was willing to take the bait. “What is it?”

“Remember how I suggested that if the war didn’t end, we could bolt?” he asked. “Well… Why did that have to be exclusively if the war didn’t end?”

He certainly hadn’t seen that coming - it had felt that now that the war was over, this was just the pace his life was going to be taking from now on. “And bail on the reconstruction of the Kingdom?”

“Not forever,” he said. “Yes, our being here helps. But I think that everything will be fine if we go on our own for a little while. Dimitri and Byleth have things in hand, and back home my father isn’t going to be retiring anytime soon, and your uncle is looking after your territory. This might be our only chance.”

When he put it that way, it did make a lot of sense - once either of them inherited their titles, then they would lose a great deal of the freedom that they had now. Felix wasn’t really ready for that, truth be told; he hadn’t ever anticipated becoming Duke so young.

“I’ll spend the rest of my life serving my father’s wishes, and serving the people who call Gautier home. But first, for now,” Sylvain went on when he didn’t answer, reaching out to take hold of his hands. He caught Felix’s eye, trying to convey how serious he was being even though it wasn’t necessary because of the way Felix could feel him on the other end of their bond, nervous and earnest and heart racing. “For now, I just want to be your soulmate.”

Even if Felix had been considering turning him down, there was no way that he could do so now, not like that. He wondered if he would ever get tired of hearing Sylvain acknowledge just how special a position in Felix’s life he held.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Yeah, let’s… Let’s go.” He didn’t even have the first idea of where they would go, but it didn’t matter. He trusted Sylvain and he knew that he would follow him anywhere, for good or for bad.

Sylvain’s face split into a wide grin that was almost comical, and he leaned forward to kiss him. “I love you,” he murmured against Felix’s mouth, so quiet that for a brief second he was almost sure that he had imagined it. But no, he had said it, and said it again, his hand creeping up to rest against Felix’s chest to feel the steady beat of his heart.

“I love you too,” Felix whispered. He could feel pure joy buzzing in the air between them.

* * *

Two days later, Sylvain broke the news. Dimitri looked distraught for a moment, but he understood, particularly after Felix caught him looking at their linked hands. They promised that it wouldn’t be forever.

They wrote letters to their respective houses, packed some supplies, and then they were set to go. It felt strange to be as aimless as they were after spending so many years with a clear goal ahead of him. But he knew that this was what was best, for both of them - they needed some time to just be them and let this budding thing between them flourish.

They headed east first; while there was something tempting about jumping straight into Adrestia and picking fights with any remaining Empire stragglers, that felt counter to the whole goal of leaving their lives behind.

(“What do you say, straight through Ailell?” “One of us will die if we go through Ailell, and it won't be me.”)

It was strange, but not unpleasant, to see the places they had fought for. The cities were already beginning to rebuild and bounce back, and it spoke to the strange resilience of the human spirit. They still encountered skirmishes here and there and they were quick to put an end to those, but for the most part they stuck to themselves.

Counter to Sylvain's original plan, they did mostly stay in Fodlan. Traveling further had its own appeal, certainly, but home was home and Felix had never really figured out horses for long distances, so they never strayed too far.

At the end of the war, a message had come in from Claude, properly introducing himself for the first time as Almyran royalty. (“I knew it,” Sylvain had said, and though Felix didn't have much reason to distrust him on it, he also didn't quite believe him.) Out of mostly curiosity, one of their stops was to head over the border. Maybe just as much as that, it was to be able to say that they had done it. They did not actually end up meeting with Claude, which was fine - this wasn't a trip about anything other than them. They camped in Fodlan's Throat in their return journey, and Felix reminded Sylvain of just how resourceful he could be with his surprising knowledge of the flora and fauna, as well as quick reflexes and knack for sneaking up on prey.

After that, they returned to Fodlan proper and wandered their way across the countryside in a meandering clockwise circle.

Sylvain kissed him atop the central hill in Gronder Field, calming the ache in both their chests that being there brought. It was a strange feeling to return and relive the memories, and Felix couldn't help but wonder what exactly he was thinking about, though ultimately he felt it best to not break the silence that had fallen over them until they moved on.

But they never stayed put long, perhaps to sate the part of Felix that was already itching at the thought of actually settling down in Fraldarius and just having to stay there most of the time.

Overall, in spite of time having passed and the overwhelming majority of people preferring peace in a unified Fodlan, being in Empire territory made them both ill at ease. So when they got the opportunity to be ferried to Brigid, they went for it on impulse.

To their surprise, they were actually called upon by the recently crowned Queen of Brigid upon their arrival. She greeted them with more warmth than either of them had expected, greeting them as old friends and providing accommodations for them, seemingly delighted to see them. That delight only grew when Sylvain told her that they were in her country and thus it was only right that he speak in her tongue; his words were slow and Felix suspected his grammar was clumsy, but Petra had beamed at him and clapped.

They stayed in Brigid longer than they'd stayed anywhere. It just felt right, both of them at ease in a way that neither of them had expected - coming from somewhere so cold, somewhere as warm as this shouldn't have been comfortable. The sun was hot, but the people were happy and welcoming, even as Felix failed to learn the language and had to defer to Sylvain, who made surprising progress in gaining fluency by throwing himself into it over the time they spent on the archipelago.

Of course, for Felix, there was the benefit of seeing Sylvain in swimwear, seeming to shine as he emerged from the water on the beach, his skin tanning while Felix's only ever burned.

(That had its own benefits as well, of course, as Sylvain moved careful hands over his skin with soothing lotion, even if he said it was just as much for his own good as it was for Felix - “Remember, when you burn yourself to a crisp, I feel it too.”)

It was… nice. Perhaps by coming to a land so far removed from everything they had been through and everything they'd ever known, they were actually able to properly appreciate just being around each other.

In the evenings when the sun was no longer a threat, Sylvain had an easier time convincing him to go for walks along the beach together. He would probably forever associate fond memories with the feeling of warm sand between his toes and cool water lapping at his ankles.

Their nights were spent curled up together, happier and more at peace than he could ever remember being. Little by little, he acquainted himself with every inch of Sylvain, mentally mapping out all the freckles that marked his skin - and making note of the new ones that popped up.

They help each other through nightmares, assurances whispered against skin when everything in their respective and shared histories became too much. Somehow, even that felt good; maybe it was just the reminder that neither of them was ever alone in anything.

Still, it couldn't last forever, and the thought ate at him in quiet moments. He was sure that Sylvain was aware of the quiet anxiety that started to eat at him the longer their stay stretched out, and he suspected that he felt similarly about it all, but the longer they could put off actually talking about it, the longer they could keep the spell from breaking.

“What happens when we go home?” he asked eventually.

Sylvain looked up at him, a heavy sigh falling from his lips. “Well, regardless of anything else, I'm still not leaving you,” he said. That part could never be a question. 

“You'll have to be in Gautier,” he pointed out. “And I'll have to be in Fraldarius.”

“Not all the time. I could travel between the two,” he said, as if somehow it was just that easy. Maybe it was, maybe it always had been. “Eventually, once my old man gives up the reins, I think we could actually give some consideration to the idea of combining the territories.”

It sounded simple and perfectly reasonable when Sylvain said it, which was, somehow, the case with a lot of things. It would also end up being some amount of fuss to make it happen, but if there was anyone who was prepared for the task, then it was Sylvain. “We could consider the idea,” he said with a nod, but it felt pretty decided, at least as far as they were concerned - they would be together and acting as the heads of both their houses regardless, so it really only made sense.

“But I know that’s not really what you’re worried about,” Sylvain said, his hand reaching out to twirl a lock of dark hair around his index finger. It had become an idle habit of his.”But I want you to know that no matter what, this isn’t going to fall apart.”

“I know it’s not,” he said. He was, at least, decently confident in that much, and not just because their souls were entwined in a way that made entirely abandoning each other nearly impossible. No, after the last couple of years, he would be deeply, personally affected if Sylvain tried to leave him; he almost wondered what that heartache would feel like. That on its own would probably be enough to bring Sylvain back if he were to ever leave. “I just… It won’t be as easy as this has been.”

“When has anything ever been easy for us?” Sylvain pointed out, a little grin forming on his lips. “You know I like a challenge. And besides, getting to spend every night with you like this is reward enough to motivate me, don’t you think?”

Rolling his eyes fondly, he kissed him again, practically melting as Sylvain rolled him onto his back.

* * *

Felix wasn't sure what exactly it was that he was expecting when he returned home to Faerghus. He supposed that he thought it might have felt wrong, or that maybe he would dread the life that was surely waiting for him as soon as he settled back in Fraldarius and took his place as Duke.

But they returned to Fhirdiad first, and honestly it was… surprisingly comfortable. Even seeing Dimitri again was good.

The man was surprisingly eager to see them, wrapping both of them up in a tight embrace. “I had no idea you were coming,” he said, looking every bit a young boy and not the king they knew him to be. Conveniently, he never would have wanted them to treat him like a king (not that Felix ever would have, anyway).

“Neither did we,” Sylvain said with a grin. He was still fresh and bright the way he always got after a long ride, for which Felix felt he had to be grateful; it was exhausting to him, so feeding off of Sylvain's energy helped immensely. “Well, we did know we were planning on coming back, obviously. Just not necessarily here, specifically. The idea was to go back to Fraldarius first.”

“Then someone had a better idea,” Felix said.

Sylvain glanced over in his direction, an overly large smile on his face that immediately clued Dimitri in on the fact that something significant was going on. “Can I tell him? I'm going to tell him.”

“Of course you can tell him. Why else would we be here?”

“Tell me what?” Dimitri cut in, looking between them with a mixture of apprehension and excitement in his face.

“We decided we might come back to Fhirdiad and have a wedding.”

“Wedding? Wedding,” he repeated, confused for just a second before he lit up, his entire demeanor perking up as realization dawned on him. “You're getting married. Finally.”

“Finally?” Felix echoed. “It hasn't been that long.”

“It's been an entire lifetime,” Sylvain pointed out, and well, perhaps he didn't quite have an argument against that.

He was opening his mouth to try to make a rebuttal anyway, when suddenly cut off by being pulled into another crushing embrace.

“I worried you might come back and you'd already done it,” Dimitri said, a little bit teary-eyed as he kept his firm hold on Felix's shoulders, keeping him from bolting. “Or that you might not come back at all.”

“We said we'd come back, didn't we? Here we are, we're back,” he said. “There's no reason to be so… Whatever this is.”

More than he was thrown off by Dimitri's reaction, he was struck by the thought that maybe his marriage to Sylvain really had been a long time coming. While technically, yes, their relationship had only become overtly romantic at the end of the war and only a few years had passed while they were away, it had perhaps been there, just below the surface and just waiting to bloom.

He had been surprised when Sylvain asked him to marry him, but maybe he shouldn't have been. They had done plenty of waiting, after all, both of them.

Briefly, Felix had thought that maybe the idea of getting married was to make things as simple as possible - it was hard to dispute a marriage, and Sylvain's father couldn't try to pair him off with some random noblewoman if he was already married. But then reality had sunk back in, and he remembered that Sylvain would never do something he wouldn't do, no matter how the Margrave tried to insist he needed to make up for leaving for a few years. No, Sylvain had asked because he loved him and this was exactly the kind of impulse that he was willing to indulge.

“Don't worry, he laughed at me for crying when he said yes,” Sylvain told Dimitri, which was a blatant lie. He hadn't cried, but maybe Felix had a little bit, and Sylvain didn't even laugh at him either. “But, ah, maybe try and not break him. At least let me marry him first.”

Dimitri laughed as he released Felix, that smile returning to his lips again; it felt a little surreal to see him so very happy, especially knowing that it was because he was happy for them, but it was good nonetheless. Better than good. “Of course. Forgive me, I should keep my composure better than this.”

“Since when have you worried about appearances around us?” Felix pointed out, and Dimitri laughed and admitted that maybe yes, he could let himself slip a little bit in their company.

From there, he moved quickly into planning mode - apparently, a wedding was much more entertaining than the average day to day duties of a king.

They decided that it would make the most sense for the wedding to be held in Fhirdiad; there had been some discussion of going back to Garreg Mach, but the majority of their friends had remained in Faerghus, making it a good central location for them all to attend. As could’ve been expected, Dedue was in the capital, as was Ashe, which made inviting them easy.

(It also meant that when Dedue volunteered to help set the dinner menu for the occasion, Ashe was eager to offer his help as well.)

Ingrid was also serving Dimitri as a knight, again to no one’s surprise, though at that moment she was in former Empire territory; she would be back soon, sooner if she was informed of Sylvain and Felix’s arrival. Mercedes had managed to get her orphanage up and running, and though Annette had taken a teaching position there in Fhirdiad, she was currently off helping Mercedes. Of course, Byleth was back at the monastery, but she visited Dimitri regularly; she would surely be willing to return here again for the wedding.

Within a few weeks, they were all assembled, and things were shaping up for a wedding that, while humble at Felix’s insistence, would surely be the talk of the region for months to come - the whole event was being thrown together relatively quickly, and word may or may not have reached their families by the time they were already wed.

“You know, we could still just ditch all of this and just get married in some random town, just us there,” Sylvain commented as they sat together on a balcony overlooking Fhirdiad a couple of nights before the wedding, and Felix couldn’t help but laugh.

Shaking his head, he said, “We’ve already gone to this much trouble.”

“True. I’m just not sure that I even feel like waiting that long,” he said.

“You’re impossible,” he said, fondness seeping into his tone that he didn’t even try to avoid.

“I know it,” he said, reaching over to lift Felix’s hand, lifting it to press a kiss to his knuckles. “But you wouldn’t have me any other way.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But you’re not going to sweet-talk me into eloping with you. Annette would kill me.”

“Annette could come along,” he said. Humming, he paused for a moment before going on, “Don’t worry, I’m not actually planning on anything like that. And I’m not getting cold feet. The opposite, even.”

“We have the rest of our lives,” Felix said. It was more of a significant statement now than it had once been; peace was here, and they could probably expect a good handful of decades together.

Sylvain’s smile grew a bit wider at that, squeezing his hand. “We do.”

* * *

They married under the Garland Moon, just a couple of weeks after Sylvain’s birthday. He made Felix a crown of white roses and though he had glared and insisted that he was not going to wear it, when the time came he allowed it to be placed on his head, atop hair Annette had braided with careful hands.

There was a small crowd in attendance, but the world seemed to narrow down to just the two of them as Sylvain slid a ring onto his finger, sealing it with a kiss before letting him put a ring on his hand in return.

Felix had never understood the point of weddings, really. It had all just seemed like a spectacle, and to be fair, maybe it was. All of this was symbolic, given that he had a far more meaningful bond with Sylvain than marriage and had already made his vows to him as a child, but that didn't mean it wasn't worthwhile. No, seeing a distinct shine in Sylvain's eyes and feeling his love and devotion reflected back from him in his very core, surrounded by those that loved them… It was worth every bit of trouble.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hello on [twitter](https://twitter.com/bigfootsflannel)!! retweet this fic [here](https://twitter.com/bigfootsflannel/status/1351288303509774338?s=19)


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